


Beautiful Things

by Viola25



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:26:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viola25/pseuds/Viola25
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Effie chose tributes, Cinna dressed them for their deaths, and Caesar made them pretend to smile about it. But what did these Capitol citizens think about the Hunger Games? 3 vignettes from before and during the 74th and 75th Hunger Games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Caesar

**Author's Note:**

> -This story will contain spoilers for all the Hunger Games books. Please do not read it if you don't know how the series ends.
> 
> -Because it is from the point of view of Capitol citizens, the story contains some thoughts that are offensive in various ways towards the poor, sick, mentally ill, or addicted. It also discusses canon-typical death of tributes and rebels. That said, it's generally not as graphic as the actual books.
> 
> -Likewise, these three vignettes may portray Katniss and Peeta, and their relationship, in a way that's OOC, because it is not Katniss and Peeta that I am trying to capture, but how they're perceived by these unreliable narrators.
> 
> -I would love to read other stories from the point of view of Capitol citizens (canon characters or OCs) and see how their thought processes change over the course of the series. Even though I've binged on Hunger Games fanfic since seeing the second movie, I haven't run into a lot of this, so I would welcome recs. :)

* * *

Caesar Flickerman has always loved beautiful things.

His favorite part of the Games as a child is the parade introducing the tributes, and the interviews with mentors in the room with the golden carpet, and sometimes the tribute interviews- if the tribute is pretty. His favorite movies are the ones with glamour. The awards he pays attention to: cinematography, makeup, costume design.

He remembers this now, sitting in his cell, waiting for the rebel thugs to come and execute him. The verdict hasn’t been announced yet, but how could it be anything else? He is the face and the voice of the Hunger Games, and he has been for a very long time.

He starts his career by trying to make it as an actor. He gets a few roles, and the performances, if not met with glowing reviews, are at least not panned. His directors and costars like him. He has talent and is willing to work hard, but luck never escapes its lightning bottle for him, and he knows he could burn through his friends and friendly favors and have nothing to show for it but receipts and bitterness. He takes a job as a secondary interviewer on a third-rate variety hour. 

That show is canceled, but the guests liked him and the station’s higher-ups notice. They offer him a gig hosting an enhancement dating show. Rich fetishists are willing to pay for enhancement surgery on the contestant they choose. They in turn will be competing against each other for the contestants’ favor. No one expects the show to take off, but it’s cheap to make- the great costs are the cosmetic surgeries, which contestants themselves will cover.

“Enhance Match” is the surprise hit of the season. Though really, is it so surprising? The enhancements are astonishing to see, unnatural to the extreme in form and color. Capitol workplaces buzz with talk of gilded antlers, eyes expanded to the size of fists and forcing the face to accommodate them, clothes that make their wearer look more naked than real nakedness ever could. Such delicious fun, too, to see the cosseted children of Panem’s wealthiest citizens squabbling over their strange creations. It is such a fun change of pace in that boring stretch of months without the Hunger Games!

And though from cycle to cycle of the show the contestants change, the enhancements change, even the doctors retained by the show come and go, Caesar stays. He consoles petulant or raging contestants to their faces and gently mocks them to the audience. He narrates the show with apparent glee. He interviews those petty, damaged people with their silly, stupid problems with more skill than most viewers realize. He doesn’t need to pry their secrets out; they are all too willing to offer them up in exchange for their 15 minutes of fame.

Caesar doesn’t particularly like the contestants. He doesn’t dislike them either. He doesn’t think much about them one way or the other. They’re a part of his work, like a camera or a prop for the set. They come to him with such practiced public personas they feel like actors reciting lines, like interchangeable toy dolls Panem swaps out of its toy box from season to season.

Caesar’s fame skyrockets. He plays it well. He does an enhancement each cycle, offering a few less extreme versions of show enhancements for viewers to vote on. He entertains at private functions, at corporate functions. He hosts awards shows and pokes fun at the honorees without getting too controversial or mean. He goes to the right amount of parties and has the right amount of lovers. Male, female, other, it doesn’t matter; they’re all beautiful. He’s still under 30 when Quinoa Signal (great showbiz name) announces he’s stepping down as Host of the Hunger Games.

Everyone speculates about who will book the job. Bets are made. Comics, including Caesar, fold a punchline or two about the matter into their acts. Every entertainment pundit who airs a special about it, every office that gossips about the shortlist, every bookie who takes a bet, gives high odds to Caesar Flickerman.

Caesar never meets Mr. Signal. He goes to the man’s house expecting a private interview, but the man waiting for him in the study is none other than President Snow. “This is not a job to undertake lightly,” says the President. The scent of roses hangs in the room, heavy in the afternoon sunlight. “Mr. Signal Hosted for nearly 40 years.”

“Hosting the Hunger Games is the best job I could ever have,” Caesar says, completely honest. “I would keep it as long as Panem found me equal to the task- anything else I might do after could only be a step down.”

President Snow steeples his fingers, gives Caesar a slow look. “Get rid of those ridiculous tattoos. Get a few enhancements, yes, the kind that last and don’t go out of style. From the moment you sign the contract with me to the moment I decide the contract is complete, the only work you will have done will be that of maintenance.” Seeing Caesar’s confusion, the President elaborates, “Tributes and mentors come and go. The arenas are different every year. Even the Gamemakers change periodically. Two things then must always stay constant for viewers. Do you know what they are?”

“The host,” Caesar says, nodding. “And….”

“The force behind the Games.” That is President Snow himself, of course. “Take a week to think about it. Make or unmake enhancements as needed. Now go.”

Dismissed, Caesar goes.

Of course he takes the job! He’d be crazy not to. He enjoys the tribute parade as always, this time from his shining stage. He’s bargained just a touch of changeable color for his face into the all-powerful contract, for his lips, hair and eyelids, but the features themselves are already artificially ageless, even somewhat older than before to give himself a head start on the consequences of aging.

Sitting in his cell now, looking out the barred window at the smoldering ruins of the Capitol, Caesar tries to remember that first Hunger Games. He tries to summon the faces of the tributes. He remembers only one.

Helena was his favorite at the parade, and she’s his favorite again in the interviews. District 2, specialty: knife play. She’s all tawny skin and sleek short hair. She has precious gems tattooed into her skin, and actual gems dangle from her ears, drip from her fingers and wrists, spin and catch at the stadium lights. Her teeth are very white, and she laughs often. She is such a beautiful thing. Caesar and Panem are captivated.

She dies at the Cornucopia. A spear enters the perfect skin of her flat belly and pins her to a willow tree. The male from District 1 laughs and leaves her there, blood bubbling  at her lips. He examines the Cornucopia’s riches with his new allies, and they listen to Helena die.

It is a slow death, and an ugly one. Somehow the spear missed Helena’s vital organs, but she is unable to free herself. She lingers. It is some combination of blood loss, exposure and dehydration that kills her, but before the canon sounds she begs for her father to help her. She talks nonsensically to her absent mother and pleas for words of comfort. 

Very little of this unsettling dialogue airs, but Caesar sees it all in the editing room. She isn’t beautiful anymore. She isn’t a thing either, but a frightened child. Caesar checks the program later that night. Helena was 15 years and 39 days old the day she died.

Caesar thinks it was first time nerves. The Hunger Games is much more intense than any of his previous jobs, of course. _This is how we remember our past_ , the slogan goes. _This is how we safeguard our future._ He was just taken by surprise. It won’t happen again.

It happens again, though. Not every tribute, of course, there are too many of them and he meets them so briefly. But they are real to him in a way they weren’t before. Before, it was like watching a movie. He knew the Games were real, of course, aired live, but the tributes were just pixels on his television screen or, on the rare occasions he got a seat inside the stadium, distinct figures washed out by spotlights.

Now he shakes their hands- often he kisses a girl’s hand or cheek. He looks into their eyes and he can see how very afraid and hopeless they are. He looks down the row of tributes and sees a boy crying- the boy must be 12 years old but looks younger. “Can’t you calm him down?” Caesar asks the escort, and he doesn’t know what she gives him but the boy is drugged and vacant in the interview chair. He doesn’t respond to any of Caesar’s questions. The audience laughs. The boy steps off his launch plate before the 60-second countdown is even up. They edit it to look like he lost his balance, because tributes are only allowed to kill each other, not themselves. 

Quinoa Signal, former host of the Hunger Games, also kills himself, causing a brief stir in the Capitol. He had a drinking problem, some say. He had mental problems, said others, he was sent to a special hospital once. Caesar wishes he’d talked to Signal, at least once.

He starts having district escorts provide him with two or three little tidbits about the tributes. It gives him something to work with. He gets better-though not perfect- at reading the tributes’ faces. The arrogant ones. The ones with fighting spirit. The ones who will die, probably at the Cornucopia, and the ones who have accepted this.

It begins to bother Caesar that he cannot remember the names of all the tributes. They are not accessible on the intraweb system, which surprises him. He calculates that for nearly half of them, Caesar was within the last 4 people who spoke to the tribute. But any kind of memorial to them in his own home would be treason. He goes to an official arena memorial only once- he is spotted by other tourists and ends up signing autographs and posing with fans at the exact spot where three tributes drowned. He doesn’t go again.

Caesar takes fewer lovers. He is respectable, now. He comes home to Fitzgerald one night after having the wrinkles pulled from his face and finds Fitz rewatching the 68th games, drinking wine and eating popcorn.

“What’s this?” Caesar asks. He thinks he will need to break up with Fitzgerald soon.

Fitz smiles. “Crappy day at work. Thought I’d watch the cycle’s highlight reel. I just loved this fight. Slingshot versus tree branch, who would have thought  Male 3 and Female 7 would be voted “Best Battle” when the year started?” He hesitates, smile fading. “Caesar?”

Caesar stares at the paused screen. Even impaled on the sharpened branch, Monique (District 7) had managed one last shot, and the jagged stone had caught Joowon (District 3) in the eye. In her aired interview, Monique had boasted that she could make a weapon out of anything. Joowon had played the sullen tough guy. 

Finally Caesar looks at his lover. How can he explain? “We don’t use all the footage we have of tributes.”

“What?”

Caesar sighs. He shouldn’t. But… “Joowon’s favorite food was fried fish. Monique loved horses, but the opening ceremony was the only time she got close enough to touch one.”

Fitz’s expression softens and he opens his arms to Caesar. They cuddle for a while, forgetting the television, and when it beeps to warn of standby mode, and they turn to it and see the image it was frozen on—Caesar feels Fitz tense, and his lover’s subtle shudder. It has taken Fitz far less time than Caesar to understand (Fitz’s niece loves horses and Fitz is helping wear her parents down in the matter of a pony for her birthday). “Caesar, I’m sorry,” Fitz murmurs, and Caesar knows that someday he’ll marry this man.

Caesar is no revolutionary, and he accepts the rationale for the Hunger Games. But he hates them, too. He tries not to get attached to the tributes, then feels guilty for keeping them at a distance. They’re the ones dying for entertainment, not him—he owes them his guilt, if nothing else. He and Fitz never have kids, though plenty of surrogates offer. Sometimes he dreams of a child, a child he can’t quite picture and a name that hovers just beyond his memory. In the dream this vague child-shape is reaped, and looks at him and says, “Daddy help me, daddy please.”

So Caesar does his best to make the tributes comfortable on stage. He offers answers for tributes who are tongue-tied. He plays along with transparent interview strategies. Their last days will be hard enough, and this is the only part of it that he can ease. He knows now why Quinoa Signal killed himself, and after a few superficially pleasant conversations with President Snow, Caesar understands why Signal waited to be released from his contract before even trying.

Caesar is unprepared for the 74th Hunger Games. His suggested notes for the 12 Female, Katniss Everdeen, ask only that he show off her dress. The synthetic flames licking at her skirt is nothing on the banked fire in her eyes. If the bookies could see what Caesar could they’d make her the odds-on favorite to win.

Caesar’s notes for the 12 Male say only, “Peeta Mellark is in love.” He scoffs at it a bit in the green room. The actual interview is terrible, just terrible, because he’s one of the ones Caesar genuinely likes and he can see the acceptance in the boy’s eyes. Later, he will dream that Peeta is his child, and he’s not sure whether this is less kind to Peeta’s father or Peeta himself.

Then Peeta Mellark turns the Hunger Games into a love story, Katniss Everdeen brings him home, and nothing is the same again.

One of Caesar’s guards lets slip that some former victors of the Games are speaking on Caesar’s behalf at the trial and sentencing (Caesar has not been present for either). The guard is incredulous. So is Caesar, really, but he supposes when a person is trying to prepare to die young, a little kindness goes a long way. He hopes that Fitz hasn’t visited because he’s not allowed or because he’s wisely distanced himself from Caesar, and not because he’s lying dead somewhere.

Caesar hopes his husband will live to see the new Panem, because Caesar has no expectation or hope of doing so. If there’s an afterlife though, he hopes Fitz will find him and hold him; tell him how it ended and whether it was beautiful. 


	2. Effie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to everyone who's reviewed. I forgot to mention in the last chapter that I'm certain my portrayal of Caesar was influenced by FernWithy's series "Narrow Path" (here on A03). If you have time for over 200,000 words of story, I really recommend it.

* * *

 

Effie Trinket has always loved beautiful things. 

Her mother has a collection of angel figures spun from colored glass. Each year for her birthday Effie’s father gives her another one. Effie isn’t allowed to touch the angels but she’s allowed to look at them. She looks at them for hours. Effie is a good girl and never touches the angels even though she really wants to. When she is six years old she decides that she will look like the angels someday. Same hair, same colors. 

Effie is a plain child. Her mother is a model and frets over Effie’s extreme ordinariness. She encourages Effie to hide her unremarkable features as much as possible. “Bone structure just gives some people a head start,” her mother says. “It’s what you do with your looks that counts.” 

Effie starts wearing wigs when she’s 10 years old, because her natural hair is pathetic no matter what color it’s dyed- limp in heat, brittle in cold, flyaway in the slightest of breezes. The wigs are uncomfortable, itchy and hot, but they’re very pretty. 

Effie is a worried child. Her father is a Peacekeeper of some rank- he’s stationed in the Capitol and works office hours. Effie doesn’t really understand his job—she’s too busy keeping track of his rules. Most of them are “don’ts”- don’t wear shoes in the house, don’t slouch when eating, don’t watch television other than Capitol history and don’t even think about watching that until homework and chores are done. There is a chart on the wall listing the whole family’s daily and weekly tasks and their daily and weekly schedules. Effie’s favorite chore is wiping the dust from her father’s mahogany desk. Everything is perfectly situated in its place down to the jar of paperclips, and the wood is so smooth it feels like silk.

For each task left unfinished and each mark on the calendar not kept there is an escalating and regimented prescribed punishment. Example sequence: no new shoes this week, no new shoes for birthday, write letter to class admitting fault. 

There is no physical violence aside from the occasional spanking and neither of Effie’s parents ever raises their voice. She never goes hungry, not least because one task is to finish everything on her plate, whether she likes that food or not.  

Effie’s father is handsome and strong. Everyone in the neighborhood respects the Trinkets. Effie’s mother is beautiful and fashion-forward. Everyone in the neighborhood imitates what the Trinkets have. 

Effie’s favorite class in school is Historical Panem because it explains not only all the rules for good citizens to obey but also why the rules exist. The deep way they can explain things gives her shivers (in a good way!) sometimes: _This is how we remember our past_. _This is how we safeguard our future._ It’s so comforting! She thinks the districts must be really scary, because the people out there are surely mentally deficient. Why else would they be reluctant to follow rules established for their own safety? The Historical Panem teacher explains that this lack of self-control and respect for authority is why the outlying districts are poor. Effie shudders at the thought. 

She delights in planning birthday parties and school fundraisers for her classmates- and if they seem less willing to talk to her on the day than in the ones leading up to it, she tells herself it’s good because she can make sure everything goes according to plan. She studies event planning for her vocational training, of course. 

To her delight, fresh out of school she’s hired by HGPC, the Hunger Games Planning Committee. Unfortunately, she’s assigned to District 12, but it makes sense that one must start from the bottom and work her way up. 

The planning is fantastic. She arranges the best train car and the best travel chefs for **her** tributes. When a new Training Center is built, she successfully argues that floor assignments should match district numbers, netting her tributes the penthouse. She coordinates events between the stylists and prep teams, the stylists and sponsors, the sponsors and mentor. 

It’s useless, though. Her aggressive lobbying for 12 hasn’t won her any friends among the escorts, and she has no hope at all of getting away from 12 until someone in a better districts leaves. Even worse, no one from 12 is even a little bit appreciative of her months of hard work. 

No one thanks her for how much faster their train is than normal! 

No one thanks her for the amazing food- they just throw it up, even the drunkard mentor! 

No one thanks her for getting 12 down first to the training room, to the opening ceremonies, to their interviews, to the launch rooms! 

No one in 12 even smiles at her or mentions her wig’s color or how well she’s pulling off the latest fashion—she’s always ahead of the curve courtesy of her mother, who now manages young models and helps direct their enhancement choices. 

Effie tries to tell herself they just don’t know any better because they’re so uneducated, but she loves beautiful things, and District 12 is the ugliest, meanest place she’s ever seen. Every year on the train ride down she tells herself she’s mentally exaggerating how wretched it is, and is somehow startled all over again. Haymitch is a cruel drunk who always seems to know the best way to hurt her feelings and does so effortlessly, casually. Her tributes are invariably little heathens that eat like wild animals and wipe their noses and mouths on their sleeves. They never win either, never come close to winning. The other escorts snicker at Effie, and her face burns. Sometimes she thinks she’ll be stuck with District 12 forever. 

At the reaping for the 74th Games, she senses that her luck is shifting. First, a volunteer! Yana and Walburga get to see volunteers all the time with the districts they escort- they even had to work together to figure out a **system** for volunteering so the reaping doesn’t take all day. Effie had given up hope of ever seeing one, and it was such a fantastically done scene she thinks even Haymitch might get some sponsors for the girl. What a lovely girl, what a darling sister she volunteered in place of- Effie hopes the girl will make it into the finals so her family will be interviewed. 

And the 74th Games only get better from there! Both of the tributes are reasonably attractive, as far as she can tell- with the help of the amazing prep and style teams she’d personally recruited they even have a shot at being beautiful. They both have table manners and the boy in particular always says “please” and “thank you, Effie.”  True, they both falter in their good behavior sometimes, but they—or Peeta at least—always apologize after, admitting they’re under a lot of stress, and she understands, right? Effie looks into Peeta’s earnest blue eyes and relents. 

After the spectacular opening ceremony as the escorts chat, Effie can’t help but gush about them, the Girl and Boy on Fire. Most of the escorts are snide about it, like they think **they** deserve Cinna and Portia more than 12 does, but the escort from 4, Filly Hooper, lingers in the hall behind the others. “Effie? I’m happy for you really, but… don’t get attached.” Effie doesn’t really know what Filly means by that—she is very attached to her work already, and has been for years! 

Of course, she learns what Filly had meant. Buzz and media time and a good training score get an escort’s hopes for a victory up, and it makes it harder to watch when things go wrong for tributes in the arena. Watching Katniss flee from a wall of oncoming fire and exploding trees, Effie’s breath sticks in her throat. Is it just her or are the Games more brutal this year? 

She doesn’t realize she’s spoken aloud until Haymitch grunts, “They’re this bad every year, sweetheart, trust me.” Flustered, but not sure why, Effie snatches up the empty bottles on the suite’s tables and chairs and carries them to be binned. 

Effie feels a keen sense of betrayal when Peeta, that nice polite boy, allies with the tributes from 1 and 2. What about Katniss? Was it all a lie? But she’ll be so heartbroken when she finds out! Admittedly she looks more angry than heartbroken in the shot, but Effie knows she’s just trying to be strong. As strong as her feelings of betrayal are, still greater is Effie’s shame when it became clear that Peeta had joined the alliance to try to **protect** his love. How could she have ever doubted him? 

She is as caught up in the drama of the Games as anyone, how could she not be, but after returning her history-making victors to district 12, something strange happens. She’s at dinner with her parents and her mother comments, “My favorite scene was when Katniss cleaned Peeta’s wound and fed and lay with him. Effie, I can’t believe you didn’t have them autograph a still for me.” 

It bothers Effie, and she’s not sure why. 

A school friend calls and says Katniss drugging Peeta was the most romantic thing she’d ever seen. A neighbor asks her if there will be any auctions to spend time with the victors, like Finnick Odair sometimes does. “Neither!” Effie cries without thinking. “Why would they need to single mingle? They have each other.” 

The man is disappointed. “Neither of them, then? Well, let them know I’d make it well worth their while, and I’m not the only one.” 

Effie pushes down a sudden and inexplicable feeling of protectiveness and asks, “Which one?” 

“Either, both,” the man shrugs. 

It takes Effie a while to figure out why these comments and others like them bother her, and when she does figure out the reason, it’s a little embarrassing. She’s been getting… possessive of her tributes. When her mother casually refers to Katniss and Peeta by their first names, Effie has to bite back the urge to say, “You don’t know them, Mother.” When her mother talks about her favorite scene, Effie knows that “scene” is the wrong word. A scene could be stopped, reset and tried again. Katniss believed she was watching her true love die before her eyes. It is disrespectful to treat it as anything else. Effie knows it would be treasonous to say so though, and keeps her thoughts to herself. 

She has to do the same with the friend who thought it was so romantic, how Katniss drugged Peeta and went to the Feast for his medicine. It was one of the most powerful moments Effie has ever seen in the Hunger Games- barring, perhaps, the lovers’ decision to live or die together-but Effie cannot call it romantic. Katniss was wild-eyed, not starry-eyed, and she was so very frightened and desperate. And if she had failed, Peeta could have woken to realize that not only would his death not save her, but that their feelings had led to her own death. 

Effie tries to banish these confusing thoughts, telling herself that everything worked out in the end and now Katniss and Peeta can have their happily-ever-after. 

Except they don’t. Effie thinks maybe they really were born under a cursed star to have won just before this particular Quarter Quell was staged. It’s a forgone conclusion in the Capitol that it will be Katniss-and-Peeta in the arena again, not Katniss-and-Haymitch, and while a few romantic souls think the lovers will find a way to win together again, nearly everyone in the Capitol is speculating whether Peeta will be able to give his life for Katniss before she has a chance to give her life for his. 

“No, they’ll both win and have their wedding and have a big family!” a girl screams at her boyfriend. 

“That’s be so lame,” her boyfriend says, shaking his head. “It’ll be way more hardcore if one of them actually follows through and dies for the other. Or better yet, if they’re the final 2 again and one of them has to kill the other!” 

“They’d just do the same things as last year, eat the berries together,” the girl insists. 

The boyfriend laughs. “No way will the Gamemakers put Nightlock in the arena again this year.” 

Effie lies awake at night thinking about it. How could Peeta possibly go on without Katniss? How could life without him be any kind of victory for her? And Haymitch- she may not be very fond of him, but she’s worked side by side with him for years. When the tributes are reaped, it isn’t just her district that keeps her up and worrying. Finnick Odair always smiles at her and doesn’t even tease (much!) when her ears go pink, and Chaff always calls her “Miss Effie.” One of Beetee’s medical alert inventions saved her father’s life after his heart attack while patrolling late one night. 

As much as she tries to ignore it, a small and persistent voice going right down to her center whispers to Effie over and over again, “It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. This isn’t how the Hunger Games are supposed to work.” 

In the weeks and months that follow, Effie doesn’t understand anything. Why is Panem breaking its promise to its Victors? Why can’t Katniss and Peeta live out their lives in peace, coming back as mentors only? How can there be a District 13? Why is Katniss saying such terrible things about the Capitol and betraying them? Why is Peeta disavowing his love, when he’s always stood by her before? Why is he so thin and shaking? 

She waits for the world to start making sense again, she waits to wake up and be in her own pink bed, hazy with dreams, but she wakes again in a cell. Who are these people? Why do they keep asking Effie all these questions she can’t understand, let alone answer? Are those human screams echoing from somewhere in these stone tunnels? They can’t be, can they? 

Why does no one come? Why won’t they tell her anything? Why won’t they give Effie her wigs, or at least one of them? Don’t they understand? She’s followed all of their rules. She needs to be beautiful. 


	3. Cinna

Cinna has always loved beautiful things.

He doesn’t see beauty the way his peers do, he suspects. Cinna finds beauty in the large, liquid eyes of a trusting old dog. In the crayon drawings children make of their families. In the way sunlight moves across the fountain in late afternoon, setting small diamonds in the ripples. He’s stared into a bonfire’s depths for hours, watching tongues of different-colored flame flicker in and out of being.

He was never like other children. He did not learn things in the order other babies and children did- talk, walk, use the toilet.

When he is one year old, Cinna makes no sound, but gazes up at his parents with serious eyes. They take him to the best doctors and run test after test, but find no physical cause.

Four days after the results are back, Cinna begins communicating by drawing pictures. When he is four he still doesn’t talk but starts writing sentences in addition to drawing. Only then does he express any interesting in walking or participating in potty training, mastering both quickly.

He is nearly eight years old before he speaks, startling and delighting his teacher. He makes few errors—after all, he was  _listening_  the whole time.

When Cinna meets people affiliated with the Rebellion, if they’re in a safe place to talk they always want to tell the story of how they realized Panem was rotting, the Capitol the corrupted evil that needed to be brought down. They want to talk about their dawning realization that the Hunger Games are twisted and cruel, that the way the Capitol treats its districts is inhumane and justification enough to revolt.

Cinna listens to these stories, but he never understands them. His first memory of seeing the Hunger Games is when he was 10 years old. It’s required viewing so he surely saw it before then, but that is the first year he remembers. As soon as he understood the basic concept he started crying. His father awkwardly tried to console him, and Cinna sobbed into his broad shoulder, “I don’t want them to die!”

He’s never understood how anyone could have a different reaction to these proud, frightened, starving, doomed children. He learned quickly that his views could not be openly voiced, but the repulsion he felt to the whole charade has only grown stronger over time. He would, as much as possible, watch his viewing companions instead of the Games themselves. He would look for hints of the same horror and helpless anger that he feels.

He encounters this basic human empathy depressingly rarely, but he does see it once in a while. Cinna broaches the subject in a workroom full of whirring sewing machines, hoping it is enough to stop any electronic ears. Is he being paranoid? He’s not sure. The person he speaks to is able to introduce him to the rebellion.

At first, being an agent of the rebellion and District 13 is wonderful. He’s not alone in his feelings—there’s a whole movement of individuals who not only agree with him but who are willing to sacrifice everything for what is right. He falls in love for the first time, or as in love as he suspects someone like him can ever be. He takes comfort in the pleasure of her body, and she in his, but they make no declarations, exchange no tokens. Neither expects personal happiness in this life.

As schemes unravel and operatives are caught, as his woman with stormy eyes becomes another statistic, as Cinna becomes more aware of 13’s own authoritarian tendencies, he grows concerned. Is it enough to bring down the Capitol if there’s nothing better to replace it with? Then the Hunger Games are held again- then 24 children are sacrificed again, though the shell of one is sent home with blood money- and Cinna puts his doubts about the rebellion aside.

Cinna likes to reappropriate the imagery of the Capitol for two reasons- first, because if the Capitol doesn’t realize Cinna is being satiric they won’t realize he is working against them- and second, the slogans Cinna was forced to memorize and recite in lessons as a child only carry real weight when he applies them to his true mission.  _This is how we remember our past_ : Cinna remembers by reading banned books, the stolen and precious copies of texts that are anathema to the Capitol and were thought destroyed long ago.  _This is how we safeguard our future_ : Cinna knows that there is no future for anyone as long as the current regime is in place. He loves drawing and designing, and in another life, perhaps, that’s all he will ever do, drape the chiffon and embroider the shining silk, but here and now everything comes second to the Cause.

A vast and careful network plans the rebellion and senses that it will be soon, but it isn’t until a small blond girl is reaped in District 12 that anything really happens. Cinna only asked for 12 because of the ideas he and Portia were batting around for costumes; when he meets Katniss Everdeen, he can’t explain his sudden and peaceful certainty that the time is now at hand.

He doesn’t know what it is about Katniss- she’s beautiful and strong, but as much as Cinna loves beauty, he knows it is not enough. He has met many beautiful and strong women, in the rebellion and otherwise, and Katniss is the first he has believed can give it voice. Nor can it be bravery alone. Maybe, he thinks, it is because her impulse is naturally towards the noble, not the selfish. When she tries to be calculating and insincere, self-serving even, she is unconvincing. Her natural state of being tends toward the heroic.

He does his job and makes her into a beautiful object for the Capitol. But he knows the truth; Katniss is most beautiful in a faded blue dress screaming for her sister, in her grimy, bloody tribute costume as she bends forward to press her lips to Rue’s forehead, braid sweeping over a riot of flowers.

Cinna helps Katniss, but he helps the Cause, too. He knows President Snow sees it. He knows the simmering districts see it, including 13. Everyone sees it, except for, it seems, Katniss herself.

Cinna wakes up one day when he’s designing wedding dresses- not from sleep, but from a dream nonetheless. He is troubled. He remembers something a poet once told him: that poems need to be grounded by something real. An eagle must be an eagle before it can be a symbol of power. Katniss and the mockingjay are already the symbols of the revolution, and he realizes he now fears she won’t be allowed to be what she is- a human girl, with all the flaws and frailties to which that entitles her.

He is sorry too that he has never gotten to know Peeta better. Portia speaks of him glowingly, and Cinna has seen some of his paintings. In that other life, Cinna thinks, they would be in an artists’ circle together, making the world more beautiful and arguing about the nature of art. He would know Peeta far better than he knows Katniss. But for now, the best he can do is try to remember: Katniss is the burning ember to ignite the whole of Panem, but Peeta Mellark is her guiding star. They are something from a banned text hidden in a hollow wall of Cinna’s home: perhaps the star-crossed lovers the Capitol is so insistent on making them, but more than that, the yin and yang, the word and the action. 

Cinna does what he can. He tries to dress the girl first, not the Cause. When the Quarter Quell is announced he knows he cannot pass up the opportunity to stoke the fires Katniss’ very presence causes. He turns the mockery of a funerary wedding dress in a mockingjay itself. He also knows he is likely to pay for it with his life, and does his best to ensure Katniss isn’t forced into anything. He hopes it is enough.

He regrets that Snow times his arrest to distress and distract Katniss. He regrets that her distant screams of denial will be the last time he hears her voice. She is, after all, not only his muse and great hope for the future, but his friend. He wishes for one more telephone call, one more unveiling of a gown that makes her eyes go wide and astonished.

His last thoughts are not of beauty, but of resisting interrogation for as long as possible. Every minute he withstands it could be another victor saved from the arena, another mentor or other operative with time to escape to the hovercraft, another District 12 resident evacuated to District 13.

And though it is fire he has designed these last long years, the final dream is of water, a clean cool wave sweeping away the rotted roses, sparing all of Cinna’s friends; leaving them dripping and new in its wake.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it. This was my first attempt at Hunger Games fic, and I really appreciate everyone who read, left kudos and left reviews. Thanks so much.


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